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It's a pity that this interesting research into changing customs in science and publishing is so driven by a predetermined narrative. They found women accounte

It's a pity that this interesting research into changing customs in science and publishing is so driven by a predetermined narrative. They found women accounted for 59% of acknowledged programmers -- so 41% were men and got the same treatment. The obvious conclusion would be that programming wasn't acknowledged the way it is now, but instead they push the narrative that they weren't acknowledged because they were women. Giving overlooked women in science some due attention is perfectly fine, but unwarranted conclusions about the causes for various situations aren't, in my opinion. And the same with their explanation for how it changed. They state that it's in part because the work started being done by graduate students and postdocs, but then still conclude "Programmers, essentially, only became rewarded with authorship when they started becoming male." (and this "when" here is clearly intended to be read as a causal when). Of course there is a more plausible explanation, namely that men started becoming more interested in programming when it started presenting better opportunities for high-paying and high status jobs. Fully what is expected based on evolutionary psychology.

moosey 8y ago
> She and her colleagues found that in the 1970s, women accounted for 59 percent of acknowledged programmers, but just 7 percent of actual authors. That decade was a pivotal time for the field of population genetics, when the foundations of much modern research were laid. “Based on authorship at the time, it seems that this research was conducted by a relatively small number of independent individual scientists, nearly all of whom were men,” the team writes. But that wasn’t the case. Nice way of glossing over that section. At some point you just have to reject the argument that it was "best intentions" or "that's just evolutionary psychology". It was only 45 years ago that the "Equal Credit Opportunity Act" was passed. There are still tons of weird attitudes about women and their contributions to society. One that I see often is that "Women select lower paying jobs", but I rarely see the obvious counter argument "why in the hell doesn't our economy reward women for raising the next generation of workers?", as they do 80% of the house work. Women are often ignored in history books, Texas even made an attempt to have Hillary Clinton completely removed. This discussion is just one such example. There are mounds of evidence of the sexism in our society. There might be scientific reasons that it exists, but there is no scientific or ethical defense of it's continued existence. Whether in the workplace or at home, women have been supplying half of economic output for the entirety of our history, and it's time to stop pretending that it isn't the case, or that historically those in power were powerless against some natural economic state.
- quannah 8y ago
  I'm not glossing over it, it's a different point. They are implying a causal link between the 7% and the 59% when they haven't demonstrated that. They show that individual authors got a lot of help that wasn't awarded with authorship. You can point out that nowadays this work would be worthy of authorship, and that women were somewhat overrepresented in the acknowledgements without authorship. That doesn't demonstrate the big claims of sexism they're stating/implying. If they showed men getting authorship for only the programming help, and women not getting authorship in comparable situations, that would be a different matter. I didn't say sexism didn't (or doesn't) exist, there's plenty of other evidence that it did/does. I'm just saying it doesn't follow. And if I say something can be explained by evolutionary psychology that doesn't mean that therefore it's fine, or that it couldn't be changed given the right system of incentives.
  - moosey 8y ago
    You made the suggestion that as programming work became a higher paying field that men suddenly looked for jobs there, due to "evolutionary psychology", without a lick of proof that it wasn't the other way around. Perhaps programming work is really well paid now because Nintendo of America decided to advertise to boys, and then those boys grew up to become men who were interested in programming, and because men pay other men more than they offer women. Or perhaps because, as the SV folks like to say "They aren't a good culture fit" when interviewing female candidates. > We used wage data and productivity data from the whole of New Zealand to look at the reasons for the gender wage gap. We found that sexism (where employers prefer to hire men rather than women, are more likely to reject equally qualified women, or offer women less) is likely to be the most important driver of the gender wage gap. This is opposed to women working in low-paying industries or firms, being less productive, or being less successful at bargaining. [1] Of course it follows. It is undeniable that many centuries of sexism are going to take a lot of work to undo, and it isn't exactly easy when most religions followed the world over, by huge swaths of humanity, also belittle their contributions to society, and actually devalue them to be below men. These beliefs and stories have a major impact on what we do. So I'm going to stick with sexism because it is most likely the correct answer. [1] - http://theconversation.com/women-paid-less-for-same-contribution-to-work-and-sexism-is-to-blame-study-83052 http://theconversation.com/women-paid-less-for-same-contribu...

moosey 8y ago

> She and her colleagues found that in the 1970s, women accounted for 59 percent of acknowledged programmers, but just 7 percent of actual authors. That decade was a pivotal time for the field of population genetics, when the foundations of much modern research were laid. “Based on authorship at the time, it seems that this research was conducted by a relatively small number of independent individual scientists, nearly all of whom were men,” the team writes. But that wasn’t the case. Nice way of glossing over that section. At some point you just have to reject the argument that it was "best intentions" or "that's just evolutionary psychology". It was only 45 years ago that the "Equal Credit Opportunity Act" was passed. There are still tons of weird attitudes about women and their contributions to society. One that I see often is that "Women select lower paying jobs", but I rarely see the obvious counter argument "why in the hell doesn't our economy reward women for raising the next generation of workers?", as they do 80% of the house work. Women are often ignored in history books, Texas even made an attempt to have Hillary Clinton completely removed. This discussion is just one such example. There are mounds of evidence of the sexism in our society. There might be scientific reasons that it exists, but there is no scientific or ethical defense of it's continued existence. Whether in the workplace or at home, women have been supplying half of economic output for the entirety of our history, and it's time to stop pretending that it isn't the case, or that historically those in power were powerless against some natural economic state.

quannah 8y ago
I'm not glossing over it, it's a different point. They are implying a causal link between the 7% and the 59% when they haven't demonstrated that. They show that individual authors got a lot of help that wasn't awarded with authorship. You can point out that nowadays this work would be worthy of authorship, and that women were somewhat overrepresented in the acknowledgements without authorship. That doesn't demonstrate the big claims of sexism they're stating/implying. If they showed men getting authorship for only the programming help, and women not getting authorship in comparable situations, that would be a different matter. I didn't say sexism didn't (or doesn't) exist, there's plenty of other evidence that it did/does. I'm just saying it doesn't follow. And if I say something can be explained by evolutionary psychology that doesn't mean that therefore it's fine, or that it couldn't be changed given the right system of incentives.
- moosey 8y ago
  You made the suggestion that as programming work became a higher paying field that men suddenly looked for jobs there, due to "evolutionary psychology", without a lick of proof that it wasn't the other way around. Perhaps programming work is really well paid now because Nintendo of America decided to advertise to boys, and then those boys grew up to become men who were interested in programming, and because men pay other men more than they offer women. Or perhaps because, as the SV folks like to say "They aren't a good culture fit" when interviewing female candidates. > We used wage data and productivity data from the whole of New Zealand to look at the reasons for the gender wage gap. We found that sexism (where employers prefer to hire men rather than women, are more likely to reject equally qualified women, or offer women less) is likely to be the most important driver of the gender wage gap. This is opposed to women working in low-paying industries or firms, being less productive, or being less successful at bargaining. [1] Of course it follows. It is undeniable that many centuries of sexism are going to take a lot of work to undo, and it isn't exactly easy when most religions followed the world over, by huge swaths of humanity, also belittle their contributions to society, and actually devalue them to be below men. These beliefs and stories have a major impact on what we do. So I'm going to stick with sexism because it is most likely the correct answer. [1] - http://theconversation.com/women-paid-less-for-same-contribution-to-work-and-sexism-is-to-blame-study-83052 http://theconversation.com/women-paid-less-for-same-contribu...